⚜️ SDXL Control Module

Every dial you'd want to touch between a composition pass and a refinement pass, plus your style picks, bundled into one node. Per the README: "Designed to bring all of the controls for frequently adjusted parameters into a single node. Integrates with the Style Injector and Wildcard Processor, but those are optional."

What it's actually for

This pack's signature move is a two-stage SDXL workflow, and the creator's own real example - posted to r/comfyui as "Perfected 2-Stage SDXL workflow" - runs AlbedoBase XL for the first stage and swaps to a few refinement steps on Dreamshaper for the second. Splitting one long sampling run across two different checkpoints, each with its own CFG, needs somewhere to declare where stage one ends, where stage two picks up, and what CFG each stage runs at. That's this node.

Inputs that matter

• Total_Steps (default 30), Stage_1_End_Step (default 20), Stage_2_Start_Step (default 21) - the step-boundary trio. Note the deliberate one-step gap between 20 and 21 rather than an overlap; this is meant to feed two separate KSamplerAdvanced-style nodes, one running steps 0–20, the other 21–30.
• Stage_1_CFG (default 5) and Stage_2_CFG (default 7.5) - CFG climbs between stages, which tracks with a loose composition pass followed by a tighter, more prompt-adherent refinement pass. Both values sit inside the 5–9 range that's the standing community sweet spot for SD 1.5/SDXL-lineage models, so these are sane starting points rather than arbitrary pack-specific numbers.
• Main Style / Lighting / Camera - the same three style dropdowns as the standalone Style Selector node, bundled in here for convenience.
• Freeze_Wildcards - same behavior as elsewhere in the pack: lock your resolved wildcards and let the seed do the exploring instead.

Output is a single Control Pipe DICTIONARY - everything above, packed into one bundle.

The pairing you need to know about

This node only produces the bundle; it does nothing on its own. It's meant to be wired straight into the pack's Control Pipe node, which unpacks it back into seven individual typed outputs - Total Steps, Stage 1 End, Stage 2 Start, Stage 1 CFG, Stage 2 CFG, a Style dictionary, and Freeze Wildcards - for you to route into your actual samplers and style nodes. Think of Control Module as "define once" and Control Pipe as "unpack wherever you need it."

Installing it

Via ComfyUI Manager: search Comfyui FOCUS nodes, install, restart. Manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/DJ-Tribefull/Comfyui_FOCUS_nodes

Restart ComfyUI. No extra models - it's pure control logic plus the pack's bundled style CSV.

Common issues & troubleshooting

Nothing changes even after setting values. Correct if you haven't wired the Control Pipe output into a Control Pipe node yet - this module only bundles settings, it doesn't touch your sampling directly.

Get the step math wrong and nothing tells you. This node doesn't validate that Stage_1_End_Step + 1 == Stage_2_Start_Step or that both stages sum sensibly against Total_Steps. Set Stage_2_Start_Step lower than Stage_1_End_Step and your downstream samplers will silently skip or repeat steps - check the arithmetic yourself before you spend time debugging the image quality instead.

Even the creator's own showcase images aren't perfect - a hand in their example workflow's result came out slightly off, which is a plain SDXL limitation this node doesn't address. If hands matter to your output, that's a job for a separate detail pass, not for this control panel.